Read the National Pilot Interview from Austria and explore all the progress of OSTrails pilot studies. Check the latest on their national activities and learn how they’re progressing with the integration of open science and research assessment. This month we had the pleasure of speaking with Daniel Spichtinger and Victoria Eisenheld from the Univerisity of Vienna (UNI WIEN), Tomasz Miksa from the Vienna University of Technology (TU Wien) and Ilire Hasani-Mavriqi from the Graz University of Technology (TU Graz). Enjoy!

 "OSTrails provides the Austrian community with the means to further enhance the quality and interoperability of RDM services. Specifically, it helps us to digitally transform data management planning at TU Graz, TU Wien, Uni Wien, and AUSSDA by maximizing the uptake of maDMPs and the FAIR principles in Austria and thus benefiting researchers by lowering the effort involved in data management."

-Can you briefly introduce your organisation? How does it/do they contribute to EOSC? 

Three universities — TU Graz, TU Wien, and Uni Wien — collaborate to implement the Austrian national pilot. Each of these universities has significantly contributed to the EOSC:  

Uni Wien, member of the EOSC Association since 2020, is actively involved in several EOSC-related projects and task forces, both nationally and internationally, including major EU projects like EOSC BEYOND and EOSC Future. TU Wien has been engaged in EOSC from the early stages through its involvement in the EOSC Secretariat, participating in various EOSC projects and contributing to national initiatives. TU Graz is a member of the EOSC Focus project consortium that works towards aligning the technical development of EOSC. All three organisations are members of the EOSC Support Office Austria (the operational branch of the Austrian Mandated Organization of the EOSC Association). 

-What are you most excited about in OSTrails? What are you looking forward to? 

In OSTrails, we are looking forward to contributing to the Plan-Track-Assess framework components by considering several use cases in the pilot, with each organisation focusing on complementary aspects. Our common goal is to enhance DMP support, which we aim to achieve through extending, aligning and integrating DMP tools, enhancing DMP support to researchers, supporting data stewards in creating discipline-specific DMPs, providing further support implementing RDM policies, promoting FAIR principles and assessing their implementation in digital objects, as well as contributing to relevant national and international initiatives. TU Wien is specifically looking forward to adoption of the Interoperability Frameworks developed by OSTrails to better integrate their RDM services, e.g. DMP Tool based on DAMAP with repositories, SKGs, and environments where researchers work with data.

-How is planning, tracking and assessing research realised in your country/scientific domain? 

In Austria, the current situation is as follows:

Planning is primarily addressed through the development and support of Data Management Plans (DMPs), including tools such as DAMAP. TU Graz, TU Wien and Medical University Graz run DAMAP as an institutional tool. They integrate it with their internal systems to maximise the reuse of information and to help in planning. Additionally, other Austrian universities participating in the national project SharedRDM are considering using DAMAP, with roll-out of the tool ongoing in some cases, and others still in the planning phase. Furthermore, many universities, including Uni Wien help researchers to meet funder requirements by manually reviewing DMPs, clarifying questions and offering trainings for researchers who write DMPs.

Tracking: Most of the universities in Austria use a CRIS system to track publications. However, these systems do not track other types of digital research objects systematically. Users can manually update relevant entries, sometimes by integration with ORCID. There is no national SKG or a comparable tracking mechanism for all types of digital research objects.

Assessing: As mentioned, staff of participating universities manually reviews DMPS on request before submission to funders. Funders usually perform simple checks of DMPs. To our knowledge, the production of digital research objects – other than publications – is not systematically reflected in the assessment of researchers’ performance at the moment. Hopefully, this will change with the adoption of CoARA.  

-Can you provide some details on your pilot's main actors, services and priorities? How will your pilot adopt the results of OSTrails? 

All universities in the Austrian pilot, Uni Wien, TU Wien and TU Graz, have approved institutional RDM policies to guide the implementation of the FAIR principles.¹ They provide extensive RDM-services, including support for creating and implementing DMPs, and offer workshops and training to help researchers understand and apply FAIR principles in their work. They are also involved in EOSC initiatives and projects to align with national and international standards and policies. 

Uni Wien hosts the institutional repository PHAIDRA and is the coordinator of AUSSDA, the Austrian Social Science Data Archive consortium, which serves as the Service Provider of CESSDA ERIC for all of Austria, offering services for the social sciences. PHAIDRA facilitates the long-term storage of research output from all scientific disciplines and multiple institutions use its open-source software across Europe. AUSSDA is certified with the Core Trust Seal that recognises it as a “trustworthy repository”. The two repositories allow and encourage the use of open licenses and provide permanent addresses for research data, along with comprehensive metadata. Uni Wien has also implemented training programs for data stewards to help bridge the gap between researchers and data management requirements.² Furthermore, Uni Wien is involved in several large international open e-infrastructures, sometimes as a coordinator and in a leading role. The Open Data movement is a significant component of this involvement. One of Uni Wien’s primary priorities in OSTrails is to develop standardised DMP evaluation practices in line with national funder requirements and thereby improve the quality of their feedback processes to researchers.

TU Wien supports researchers to publish their research output according to FAIR principles by addressing relevant issues early on with the machine-actionable DMP tool DAMAP. They also provide a data repository that offers persistent identifiers, standardized and machine-readable usage licenses, and open, free, and standardized communication protocols. FAIRness is further assured by allowing metadata to be exported in various machine-readable formats and by adding interfaces for other external services. Additionally, TU Wien integrates FAIR principles into regular workshops and a course for master students. TU Wien also serves as the primary contact for the GO FAIR Austria office, reinforcing their commitment to FAIR data principles.  

TU Wien will deploy the extended version of DAMAP that follows OSTrails Interoperability Framework for DMPs. This will allow them to have a standardised way to access information on ongoing experiments through a standardised API. Furthermore, the university plans to integrate DAMAP with software running in laboratories, where researchers conduct their experiments, to ensure better integration and to enable DMPs to become true live documents: changing contributors in a DMP created with DAMAP will result in a change of privileges in other systems, like the experimentation environment, or data repository. 

TU Graz has ratified two discipline-specific RDM policies to implement the FAIR principles. The university has been a seminal contributor to efforts such as FAIR Data Austria, developing tools and repositories for FAIR data management, and has also instituted a marketplace for FAIR/RDM-related projects. 

The primary priority of the universities in the Austrian pilot is the enhancement of DMP support. This includes enhancing DMP support to researchers and supporting data stewards in creating discipline-specific DMPs. TU Graz, in collaboration with TU Wien, also focus on technological integration by improving and aligning machine-actionable DMP tools. Additionally, both universities aim to connect current repositories and machine-actionable DMP tools to the OpenAIRE Graph and other SKGs. Other goals of the Austrian pilot include to further support implementing RDM policies, promoting FAIR principles and assessing their implementation in digital objects, as well as contributing to national and international initiatives. 

-Ongoing activities and Next Steps? 

Given that the national pilot is supposed to start in month 18 of the project, we are still in the early stages of establishing the next steps in our retrospective organisations. As a next activity, we will organise another online meeting of the Austrian National Pilot. On a more technical level, AUSSDA will upgrade its repository software to increase its score in the F-UJI FAIR metric. TU Wien’s next steps will be: a) to identify groups of researchers for whom integration of DAMAP via the DMP IF could be beneficial, b) to flesh out specific use cases and collect specific requirements, and c) to analyse the pathways described in Deliverable D1.1. and to discuss which of them are relevant to what extent for the university.

Thank you for the interesting discussion! 

¹ Uni Wien:RDM policy: https://rdm.univie.ac.at/fileadmin/user_upload/p_forschungsdatenmanagement/Dokumente/RDM_Policy_UNIVIE_v1_en.pdf 

TU Wien: RDM policy: https://www.tuwien.at/index.php?eID=dms&s=4&path=Directives%20and%20Regulations%20of%20the%20Rectorate/Policy%20for%20Research%20Data%20Management.pdf

TU Graz:RDM policy: https://www.tugraz.at/sites/rdm/policies/tu-graz-framework-policy-for-rdm

² See the websiteData Stewards at the University of Vienna for further information : https://rdm.univie.ac.at/data-stewards-at-the-university/

OSTrails has set the ambitious goal of delivering a FAIR-enhanced, interconnected and machine actionable environment along with the pathways to navigate scientific information shared across services that enable and support planning, tracking and assessing research activities. To realise this, our efforts in the first six months of the project’s establishment have concentrated on understanding the technical capabilities and limitations towards harmonisation of information and practices shared between service providers of SKGs, DMP platforms, and FAIR assessment tools.

More specifically, the consortium has made significant progress in identifying the pathways and drafting the Interoperability Reference Architecture (IRA). Pathways, highlighted in D1.1. Plan-Track-Assess Pathways, are essential blueprints that outline the interactions between DMPs, SKGs and FAIR assessment tools, depicting the sequence of steps and processes required to achieve effective integration and functionality. These pathways help us understand and document the flow of data and operations, ensuring that all components of OSTrails can interact seamlessly to deliver optimal value to researchers, data managers, and other stakeholders.

Our preliminary results depict both the actions that users of the services perform and of the interactions of the services in exchanging information and automating their workflows. So far, three main pathways were identified:

_{Generic pathways diagram.}

• Plan - Focuses on refining the creation and assessment of Data Management Plans (DMPs), enhancing integration with Scientific Knowledge Graphs (SKGs) and repositories, and improving metadata evaluation.
• Track - Utilizes SKGs to monitor and evaluate the FAIRness of research outputs, recommending better tracking functionalities and integration with DMP platforms and FAIR assessment tools.
• Assess - Emphasizes comprehensive evaluation tools for DMPs and research outputs, ensuring interoperability with SKGs and repositories, and offering both automated and manual assessment options.

The Interoperability Reference Architecture (IRA), discussed in M4. Interim Products Establishment for Cross-Task Collaboration, complements these pathways by providing a detailed framework that specifies the technical standards and protocols needed to achieve interoperability among these different components. This framework involves developing three key APIs for accessing machine-actionable Data Management Plans (DMPs), Scientific Knowledge Graphs (SKGs), and FAIR assessment tools. The project incorporates insights from other EOSC projects and communities like the Research Data Alliance (RDA) to ensure alignment with current standards. The first stable draft of this architecture is expected to be completed by month 12 of the project.

_{Current draft of the OSTrails architecture depicting three main components and showing the role of Interoperability Frameworks.}

The IRA serves as a comprehensive guide for developers and integrators, ensuring that all tools and services can communicate and work together without technical barriers. By establishing a robust IRA, we lay the groundwork for a cohesive and efficient system where SKGs, DMP platforms, and FAIR assessment tools can operate in harmony, facilitating enhanced data management and scientific knowledge sharing.

Lastly, we established a glossary (detailed in M3. Methodology Establishment) to achieve consensus on the definitions of terms and concepts used within the project. This tool captures existing terminology, but also serves as an index of new terminology that our project generates ensuring that all stakeholders have a common understanding and can communicate and collaborate effectively.

Learn more by reading our deliverables and milestones reports (D1.1. Plan-Track-Assess Pathways, M4. Interim Products Establishment for Cross-Task Collaboration, M3. Methodology Establishment)  and stay tuned for more updates as we continue to make progress in our mission to enhance data management and scientific knowledge sharing.

Read the National Pilot Interview from The Czech Republic and explore all the progress of OSTrails pilot studies. Check the latest on their national activities and learn how they’re progressing with the integration of open science and research assessment. This month we had the pleasure of discussing with Robert Pergl from the Faculty of Information Technology (FIT) at Czech Technical University in Prague. Enjoy!

 - Robert Pergl

"Our team at the Faculty of Information Technology, Czech Technical University in Prague, has always been passionate about machine-actionability in data stewardship. Recognizing the skyrocketing importance of data management, combined with our expertise in conceptual modelling and software engineering concentrated in our Centre of Conceptual Modelling and Implementation at the Department of Software Engineering, we could not stand apart and felt compelled to advance solutions for FAIR data. Being part of OSTrails represents the pinnacle of our efforts, providing us with the opportunity to collaborate closely with amazing enthusiasts who share our vision. Beyond significant joint technological advancements, it also allows us to impactfully disseminate results, something we could never achieve alone."

 

-Can you briefly introduce your organisation? How does it/do they contribute to EOSC? 

We have been dedicated to FAIR-related initiatives from the outset, contributing to major projects and infrastructures like ELIXIR, GO FAIR, EOSC CZ, and RDA. Our flagship project is the Data Stewardship Wizard (DSW), developed with our ELIXIR partners, which has become one of the major solutions for data management planning. It stands apart from other solutions in that it was designed with machine actionability in mind from day one, allowing efficient knowledge management, extensive automation possibilities, machine-generated documents, and fine-grained integrations with the entire ecosystem of tools, databases, and administrative systems. Our active involvement in the RDA’s machine-actionable DMPs working group has positioned DSW as an early adopter of supporting standards.

The EOSC Secretariat in the Czech Republic has passionate and goal-oriented professionals. We are involved in two major EOSC-rooted projects: OSTrails and “Implementation of EOSC in the Czech Republic,” which includes developing the National Repository Platform (NRP). The NRP offers a highly integrated ecosystem of data management tools, while OSTrails focuses on machine-actionable DMPs, DMP evaluation, and RDM-supporting tools. Together, these projects provide excellent synergies, enhancing the NRP's robustness and integrating OSTrails' advanced components for a broader audience.

-What are you most excited about in OSTrails? What are you looking forward to? 

We have been dedicated to FAIR-related initiatives from the outset, contributing to major projects and infrastructures like ELIXIR, GO FAIR, EOSC CZ, and RDA. Our flagship project is the Data Stewardship Wizard (DSW), developed with our ELIXIR partners, which has become one of the major solutions for data management planning. It stands apart from other solutions in that it was designed with machine actionability in mind from day one, allowing efficient knowledge management, extensive automation possibilities, machine-generated documents, and fine-grained integrations with the entire ecosystem of tools, databases, and administrative systems. Our active involvement in the RDA’s machine-actionable DMPs working group has positioned DSW as an early adopter of supporting standards.

The EOSC Secretariat in the Czech Republic has passionate and goal-oriented professionals. We are involved in two major EOSC-rooted projects: OSTrails and “Implementation of EOSC in the Czech Republic,” which includes developing the National Repository Platform (NRP). These two projects offer excellent synergies: the NRP delivers a national highly integrated ecosystem of data management tools starting from data repositories, metadata catalogues, PID infrastructure, high-level user services on top of them together with cross-cutting activities such as security, user experience, user guides, trainings, data stewardship services, and a sustainability roadmap. OSTrails focuses on maDMPs, DMP evaluation, SKGs, and RDM-supporting tools, bringing cutting-edge components to further enhance the NRP along with a broader audience, as the NRP primarily targets researchers. Conversely, NRP will provide a robust, stable technological and organisational foundation, enabling effective operation and integration of OSTrails’ results in the future.

-How is planning, tracking and assessing research realised in your country/scientific domain? 

The Czech Republic has a strong, enthusiastic research community supported by infrastructures like ELIXIR CZ and e-INFRA CZ, along with the EOSC CZ secretariat and other organizations, such as the Czech National Library of Technology. Despite comprehensive coverage of hardware, software, tools, training, policies, and security, we still lack integrated, user-friendly solutions. Effective adoption and dissemination require bringing together all stakeholders – researchers, data stewards, institutions, funders, and government. Despite our progress with the DSW, tracking and assessing scientific data at all levels is still a work in progress.

-Can you provide some details on your pilot's main actors, services and priorities? How will your pilot adopt the results of OSTrails? 

Currently, we are experiencing an exceptional synergy between the NRP and OSTrails projects. While NRP primarily focuses on researchers, our OSTrails pilots mainly target funders. Our two primary national funders are the Czech Science Foundation (GAČR), which supports basic research, and the Technology Agency of the Czech Republic (TAČR), which supports applied research and experimental development. Like in other countries, both face challenges in adapting to the global shift toward data-oriented research. This shift requires new methods for evaluating project proposals, monitoring, and assessing results, all governed by the FAIR principles. Therefore, our pilots will largely aim to assist them in this transition. We are in close communication with both agencies to set the right goals and plans, ensuring our ambitions align with their capacity to implement advancements at all necessary levels. We have agreed to collaborate on co-defining metrics for DMPs and FAIR assessment governance and compliance. We are confident that, once the OSTrails deliverables are finalized and the NRP infrastructure is fully established, we will be in a position to refine our plan and achieve even greater results together. This confidence stems from what our dear DSW collaborator Dr. Rob Hooft describes as a "stick & carrot" scenario: As pan-European demands for data-oriented research quality rise, convenient solutions will be available to facilitate adoption.

Next, the Czech National Library of Technology (NTK) is our pilot partner. NTK has excelled in implementing European standards within the Czech research landscape and has played a pivotal role in advancing Open Science through its active cooperation with key players in research and innovation. Together, we plan to develop national maDMP templates, incorporating metrics to evaluate how well these Data Management Plans (DMPs) align with the FAIR principles. Given that similar ambitions are one of the goals of the NRP project -albeit with different meansp- it will be very interesting to compare these two approaches, pilot them, and determine the optimal strategy for national requirements. This experience will not only enhance our national framework but also contribute valuable insights to the broader European community. The flexibility in applying FAIR principles is a significant driver of progress in FAIR science, and we look forward to exploring this potential. Additionally, we will be testing OSTrails deliverables at CTU and select universities to further refine and validate our approach. 

Last but not least, our pilot also encompasses CESNET, an association of universities of the Czech Republic and the Czech Academy of Sciences that operates and develops the national e-infrastructure for science, research and education. CESNET provides infrastructure, with which we have extensive experience through ELIXIR. In the pilot, it is expected that CESNET will enable the use of this infrastructure and provide technical expertise for deploying services such as the DMP evaluation tool in the national context.

Based on recent local developments, we are also considering one more OSTrails pilot beyond the scope of our original intentions, but I would rather not disclose it now, letting it be a sweet surprise if we succeed.

-Ongoing activities and Next Steps? 

In our work with OSTrails, we are heavily involved in WP2, with notable intersections in WP1 and WP3. In WP1, we are playing a key role in developing the Interoperability Framework (IF), with a particular emphasis on the DMP IF component. As leaders in WP2 and dedicated software engineers, we are truly looking forward to the implementation, which aims to enhance interoperability between various tools and produce tangible results beneficial to our users. We are currently fine-tuning our approach to ensure alignment among these tools. In WP3, we are also excited about collaborating on DMP evaluation, which we plan to integrate into DSW.

Additionally, OSTrails is crucial to achieving the NRP project’s ambition of evolving “from the pilot’s checklist to a full cockpit.” By enhancing interoperability among various RDM tools and services, OSTrails will support the robust integration with national services needed for this evolution. This integration will enable researchers to not only create comprehensive, data-intensive research plans in DSW but also to track and assess their progress with increased automation. Enhanced interoperability, as facilitated by OSTrails, is essential for realizing this goal.

The next phase involves collaborating with funders to prepare them for the pilots by developing custom DMP templates (initially non-machine-actionable) and providing training and consultations. These first steps will lay the necessary groundwork and serve as the starting point for the core of the pilots.

Additionally, we plan to establish a “Centre for Advanced Data Stewardship Tools and Methods” at our faculty, highlighting our work and commitment to data management. Needless to say, OSTrails will be one of our gems.

Thank you for the interesting discussion! 

We are thrilled to introduce our new "Training Corner", a comprehensive hub designed to support the learning and development of professionals in research institutions, funding bodies, and research infrastructures (RIs).

Our Training Corner will provide a wealth of resources, including the following:

• Training Library
• Online Courses
• A Mentorship Program
• Bootcamps

These initiatives aim to boost knowledge, facilitate the reuse of support materials, and inspire specialists and researchers through expert-led content. While the full suite of materials is still under development, you can look forward to the Training Library being available by October 2024 and Online Courses launching in the first quarter of 2025.

Additionally, our Mentorship Program will open its first call in the first quarter of 2025, offering IT managers, support staff, and funders officers the chance to receive guidance from senior experts within the OSTrails consortium. Furthermore, we are planning to host our first Bootcamp on Data Management Plans (DMPs), Scientific Knowledge Graphs (SKGs), and FAIR Assessment in the second half of 2025, with a second Bootcamp scheduled for 2026.

Stay tuned for more details on these exciting opportunities and other initiatives like Hackathons, as we continue to develop and expand our training offerings! In the meantime, we welcome you to visit our Training Corner page to stay updated on these developments and prepare for the comprehensive resources that will soon be available.

Check our Training Corner: https://ostrails.eu/training